It’s been more than a year since the last volunteer work day in a Bainbridge Island park. The pandemic frustrated stewardship efforts, with two Earth Days, an MLK Day of Service and a dozen trail work parties lost.

One thing COVID didn’t slow: noxious weeds. Ivy, holly, blackberry and other nuisance plants kept right on crawling across the landscape.

Fortunately, we still had Earth Corps. Work crews from the Seattle-based nonprofit will soon complete their fourth full week in Bainbridge parks since November, keeping invasive plants in check even as the island’s volunteer stewards have been sidelined.

An Earth Corps team led by Ethan East has been grubbing out vines and Scotch broom along the loop trail at Blakely Harbor Park, picking up where he and another team left off last fall.

“It’s especially good  coming back and seeing, ‘Wow, the work we did stuck,’” East says. “The first chunk of the sweep where we […]